


writing songs that voices never share

by firstaudrina



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Choose Your Own Ending, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23313862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Lonely and left behind, Beth and Laurie find something to bond over.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence & Elizabeth March, Theodore Laurence/Elizabeth March
Comments: 16
Kudos: 54





	writing songs that voices never share

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the [DW Comfort Comment Ficathon](https://dollsome.dreamwidth.org/1978306.html?thread=15630786#cmt15630786), where the prompt was "melody and silence."
> 
> This follows the timeline of the book, so it’s set between Jo leaving for New York and Laurie’s proposal (though canon diverges, so whether everything happens the same after this fic is up to you!). I took some inspo from the real Lizzie Alcott and there are [a few references](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/08/29/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march/) to her actual life (specifically the tower story + skeleton joke).

It was Beth who got Laurie out of his troubles, or started to. 

Meg was busy balancing not one baby but two; Amy had been dispatched to Europe with her aunt; Jo had fled to New York when one too many occasions of significant eye contact with Laurie had left her fearful of what would come next. The hope chest of their shared childhood had been pilfered for goods and left empty, with the halls of their respective homes no longer echoing with laughter or childish capers. Laurie alternated time away from school by either giving into Byronic sulks, or otherwise eagerly planning what _would_ come next when he saw Jo again.

Unfortunately, his plans were amorphous and untouched by too much detail. He mostly frittered away on the piano or stared out the window at Orchard House, imagining Jo ambling up the walk with her hat askew and all her bags weighing her down. His stomach clenched thinking of what he would say when he saw her again and what she would say in return. If he made a good case for it — evidence of how he’d changed, assurances to allay her worries — then he thought he could convince her in the end. 

But Jo didn’t come home all that long winter. Whenever Laurie looked across the way to the March house, he could only see one girl framed in the window where there had once been four. At first it was just the edge of Beth’s pale face as she played her own melodies, but he saw her grow listless as weeks passed, until sometimes she just sat on the window seat and stared at nothing. 

He asked Marmee about Beth and she sighed, face drawn. “She is much changed, it’s true.” She dredged a smile up from somewhere, touching Laurie’s cheek in a fleeting, motherly way that made his heart ache. “You are such a cheerful boy, perhaps you can cheer her.”

The next time Laurie saw Beth enshrined against the cold windowpane, he put on his coat and hat and gloves to creep across the snowy field, then hid himself against the side of the house. A hand snaked out, knuckles rapping against one corner of the window, but he flattened himself as soon as Beth looked out. When she was no longer watchful, he did it again — and this time let himself be caught, her startled gasp turning to sheepish relief when she saw the interloper was him. He gestured for her to open the window. She did, drawing her shawl tighter around herself.

“Come and play at Grandfather’s piano,” Laurie said. “He doesn’t think I have the talent you do, and it sounds so lonely in the house without your music.”

Beth pinked, but it might have been the chill; she didn’t blush half as much as she used to around Laurie. “I can’t. Even that much is too far; Marmee thinks I’ll catch the death of me.” 

Something unsaid lingered in her expression, but she said nothing more, so Laurie ventured, “Dash Grandfather, then; I’ll come in and have all the entertainment for myself.”

She laughed, so Laurie would always be able to tell Marmee he had done that much. “Laurie! That’s an awful way to talk about Mr. Laurence.”

“Then I’m very lucky you can’t go over there and tell him.”

“I can always write him a letter,” she said playfully, which surprised Laurie, and pleased him. 

Once inside, he shook off the snow and took a seat next to Beth at the piano, making sure her shawl was well-arranged around her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have had you open the window,” he admitted. 

“If I turned to ice and shattered, it would be quicker.” They were sharp words, but she hid them behind a fall of reddish hair, unbound by her little lavender ribbons so it lay against her pallid cheek. 

“Beth,” Laurie breathed, and had nothing to say for a moment more.

“Don’t be so aghast, please, I forgot myself.” Beth sounded so earnest that Laurie endeavored to try, though he wasn’t quite sure he could. “Come, let’s play as you said we would.”

He swallowed. “What shall we play?”

“Something for Jo.” Beth touched a small stack of letters that sat atop the piano bound in green ribbon; he could just make out Jo’s messy scrawl. “I miss the sound of her.”

“That ought to be easy.” Rising to the challenge, Laurie began to pick out a rapid little rhythm on the keys of the piano. Jo could never be slow or stately, but had to be discordant: bashing into things, striking out in her own way.

Beth smiled. “That’s her, always in a hurry.” Her hands lifted to echo Laurie’s melody, but soon she was adding her own flourishes, enriching it with quick tapping notes that felt like shoes racing down the stairs, or Jo’s pen endlessly stabbing into the inkwell.

“Or otherwise in a temper.” Laurie brought both hands crashing to the keys, but the sudden rough cacophony made Beth laugh so much she coughed. He stopped to fetch her cup of cooling tea from the side table. “I see our Jo is much too diverting.”

“I’m glad of it.” Beth pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. “The house misses her as much as I do. The steps don’t even creak without her.” 

Laurie felt the acute absence of the missing Marches, too. Marmee must have been off looking after those in need, but there was the occasional shift of floorboards that indicated Mr. March was at home somewhere; Hannah could be heard in the kitchen, doing this or that. But there was none of the usual noise, no incessant talk turning to shouting as everyone strived to make their points heard. Beth was right: the house wanted for Jo’s stomping and Amy’s chatter and Meg’s amiable scoldings. There was no clutter. Only quiet.

“Now Meg,” Laurie murmured. Beth began this time, with a dainty little song that Laurie introduced a strong undercurrent to, steady as a metronome. It was a pity Beth lacked ambition if only because she didn’t want for talent, her delicate hands crafting something so soft and sweet that Laurie ached to hear it.

“And Amy,” Beth prompted, leaving Laurie no choice but to obey. A song for Amy truly called for flutes, but Laurie did his best to echo that bright, birdlike trill on the instrument at hand. Beth joined in, each note clear and ringing as a bell. The music abounded until it seemed to surround them, closing them up in it so securely that when it stopped, Laurie was a little dazed. His fingers tripped awkwardly on the keys and then fell into his lap.

“Now Beth?” he asked, but she only looked away.

In the ensuing quiet, Laurie said gently, “Here’s what I would say of Beth.” The song he gave her was the slowest yet, but not a dirge, nothing melancholy — a little like good rain, listening to it early in the morning in bed before the duties of the day have set in. Still, she put her hand on his to stop him. Barely a touch, her fingers fluttering away just as fast. 

Thinking he had overstepped, Laurie offered her an uncertain, “I’m sorry.” But Beth shook her head.

“Sometimes I wonder what people will think when —” She turned away so he could only see the curve of her neck and back of her head, curls of hair creeping down her back like ivy. “I’m always so frightened. It feels as though my sisters took all the bravery and left little behind for me. Sometimes I worry that I spent all my time being afraid and I’ll have none left for anything else.” 

“I’ve never heard you speak so.” 

Beth met his eyes again and smiled a little, a wistful kind of smile that only found the very corners of her lips. “I am very good,” she said. “And so I must be very good.”

It was not something Laurie had ever considered before. 

“Do you know,” Beth continued, “Once when I was very small and we didn’t have Amy yet, Meg and Jo built a tower of books around me. I’ve heard the story so many times I can almost remember it. They kept stacking more and more volumes around me on my blanket until I was quite entombed, a princess in her tower. But they were little and lost interest; they got distracted before I could be liberated.” The flow of her words needed a moment for breath to catch up to them. “When Marmee and Father came looking for me, I was fast asleep right where my sisters had left me. And they said I only smiled, that I wasn’t cross at all about being left behind.”

“That sounds just right,” Laurie said, but he was unsure of what she wanted to hear. Meg might never have let herself be boarded in; Jo would send the tower crashing down; Amy would demand release.

“Do you think I am…as I am because I was born so, or because I could only distinguish myself by my mildness?” There was a small furrow between her brows, and he could see the uncertainty weighed on her. 

“If there’s someone who could answer such a question, it certainly isn’t me. I’ve always admired your family, and you, for being true down to your marrow.”

Beth sighed. “The more time I spend alone, the less I seem to know of myself. I always thought home was home because of the things in it. The chairs in all the same places and that ugly pillow Jo loves… Amy’s art on the walls and Hannah’s cooking. But those things are still here and the house feels so empty. I can’t fill it up on my own.”

Laurie said nothing, but after a moment took Beth by the hands and placed them on the keys, urging something out of her, some sound. His fingers merely rested atop hers as Beth played — his rain song, he realized, but in a minor key. “The snow will melt,” he told her. “Your sisters will come home. And until then, I promise to make as much noise as I can until you beg me to be quiet.”

Her laugh was soft, the softest yet, but Laurie was glad of it all the same. When they finished playing, Beth surprised him again by turning her hand in his until they were clasped. It occurred to him that he had never touched Beth this much — never more than a companionable arm around her shoulders or a teasing tug of her braid. “Will you write often to your little skeleton when you are at school?”

“Yes, I shall make my letters out to Ms. Bones, and you can address mine to Mr. Fop.” He had not yet let go of her hand. “But I’m not returning to school for some time.”

“No,” Beth agreed, looking at him. “We’ve both been left behind.”

“Yes,” Laurie said. Her cool skin seemed to warm with his touch, and the candles felt very low, the piano almost vibrating with the memory of music. “You and I.”


End file.
